UNITING THE BUILT & NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS

Opportunities

Design an island. It doesn’t have to be surrounded by water. It can be made up of any material. It can serve any purpose and be anywhere in the world. But it can’t be larger than 1 square kilometer. Why would anyone want to do this? To stretch your creative muscles and have some fun.

LA+, an interdisciplinary journal curated by the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), is sponsoring this novel ideas competition called Imagination, which is open to teams of landscape architects, architects, planners, artists, engineers — really anyone.

UPenn landscape architecture chair Richard Weller, ASLA, and chair of the competition’s jury, said: “Islands hold an especially enigmatic place in our geographical imagination. Differentiated from their contexts and as much myth as reality, islands have their own rules, stories, characters, ecologies, functions, and forms. One thing is for sure: islands are good to think with. This competition is an opportunity for designers to push back against the tide of white noise and imagine alternative realities.”

The Rockefeller Foundation announced a $4.6 million grant for a new design competition for the San Francisco bay area. Modeled after the Hurricane Sandy Rebuild by Design competition, the Bay Area: Resilient by Design Challenge will support the creation of resilient infrastructure that can withstand “growing climate change-related threats and seismic, housing, and income disparity challenges.”

The competition is a partnership with the San Francisco Planning Department, and there are a host of bay area organizations involved, such as: Seedbank; Santa Clara Water Valley District; San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission; California Coastal Conservancy; Bay Area Council; Bay Area Regional Collaborative; SPUR; San Francisco Estuary Institute; the Cities of Richmond, San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose; and other local community groups.

Kristina Hill, Affil. ASLA, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of California at Berkeley, explained why the competition is needed: “the San Francisco Bay Area is very vulnerable to sea level rise. High tides today cause flooding on some key highway ramps in Marin County, and king tides cause waves to wash into the Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco. With only 16 inches of sea level rise, sections of the main highway connecting San Francisco to Silicon Valley would flood, near the Facebook and Google headquarters. So we know it’s happening, and that our region faces major risks.

We also know our infrastructure for sewage treatment and stormwater drainage is at risk from seawater flooding and rising groundwater tables. Several low income areas will be affected early in the flooding process, making our social equity problems worse. And the coastal wetlands that have been restored through several generations of environmental activism will disappear unless they are expanded and augmented with additional sediment to raise their elevation. The Bay’s ecosystems are very much at risk.”

In a release, Michael Berkowitz, president of 100 Resilient Cities at the Rockefeller Foundation, said the new competition will “build on the three Bay Area resilience strategies that have been produced so far – in Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco – and will be an important step for the resilience of the region moving forward.”

According to the foundation, the competition will have two phases. In the first phase, teams will conduct research and engage communities for three months in order to develop initial design concepts for specific locations. (It’s not clear whether those sites will be pre-determined). Teams will “organically form themselves” and be comprised of planners, engineers, landscape architects, ecologists, architects, and others from around the world. In the second phase, teams will undertake a five-month intensive design process, partnering with residents, businesses, community groups, and politicians. The goal is to create “detailed, replicable and implementable infrastructure projects.”

Hill hopes some truly innovative projects will come out of the process: “Since we don’t have hurricanes, the competition should allow us to look at some very cool options for how to live in a wetter landscape, like new housing that accommodates flooding by floating above it on water-displacement foundations. Those foundations are actually an advantage in a seismically active region like ours. We can create housing that creates room via pond systems and canals to store freshwater floodwaters, which will continue to come from tributaries to the Bay and urban runoff. These are all alternatives to turning the Bay Area into a set of walled cities like New Orleans, slowly sinking below sea level and become more vulnerable to sea level rise as it sinks.”

Many of the sessions will also qualify for continuing education credit with the Green Building Certification Institute (toward LEED AP credential maintenance), the American Institute of Architects, the American Institute of Certified Planners, and other allied professional organizations and state registration boards.

Education session speakers selected from this process will receive a full complimentary registration to the ASLA 2017 Annual Meeting and may also be eligible for reimbursement for one night’s hotel stay at an official ASLA hotel (an estimated $750 value). Landscape architecture professionals wishing to present at the New Orleans meeting need to be active members of ASLA. Allied professionals are encouraged to both submit presentations and speak but are not required to be members of the Society.

This year is the 300th anniversary of famed English landscape architect Lancelot “Capability” Brown’s birth. To celebrate, the Landscape Foundation and Building Center in London have put together Lens on a Landscape Genius, an exhibition of 100 photographs, depicting some of the 150 landscapes of Brown’s that still exist, out of the 250 he planned or designed in the 18th century.

Brown created elegant, seemingly-simple landscapes that hid deeper complexity. On the website of the foundation that promotes the preservation of his work, they write: “His designs appear seamless owing to his use of the sunk fence or ‘ha-ha’ to confuse the eye into believing that different pieces of parkland, though managed and stocked quite differently, were one. His expansive lakes, at different levels and apparently unconnected, formed a single body of water as if a river through the landscape, that like the parkland itself, ran on indefinitely. This effortless coherence is taken for granted today.”

Dawn at Gatton Park (cropped) / copyright Matthew Bruce

While he was highly sought after in his life time, becoming the master gardener for Hampton Court, his reputation declined immediately after his death. His Picturesque style, which would influence Frederick Law Olmsted and others, fell out of favor in the face of Romanticism and later Modernism. His work was viewed as the anti-thesis of the geometric, formal works of French landscape architect André Le Nôtre, but both were long seen as out of style. His style, now known as the English Picturesque, has seen a resurgence though. This year, The Telegraph calls him “the world’s most famous landscape gardener.”

West Palm Beach, a city of nearly 100,000 some 70 miles north of Miami, is grappling with how to protect itself from sea level rise. Much of this long, thin 50-square-mile city fronts the Atlantic Ocean. While in the past this form of development maximized its appeal as a waterfront city, now that exposure elevates their risk.

To create a sustainable and resilient future, the West Palm Beach Community Redevelopment Agency has partnered with the Van Alen Institute to create Shore to Core: Vision for a Waterfront City, an urban design competition, to rethink its future trajectory. The design competition though calls for interdisciplinary teams of designers (landscape architects, urban designers, architects) along with experts in resilience, economic development, place-making, psychology, and other fields.

The competition brief asks: “How can we recreate an urban core so its design is intelligent, flexible, and responsive to the needs of residents and visitors?” A new urban core is needed to better address the future needs of the community, strengthen the city’s ability to handle storms and flooding, improve the economy, and improve “individuals’ well-being through the city’s design.”

West Palm Beach / Van Alen Institute

This last point is essential to this competition: there will also be a separate research competition that aims to bring a team of environmental psychologists, neuroscientists, and other social scientists to “look at the relationship between the relationship between the built environment and the well-being of individuals and communities.” Results from this study will likely inform future plans and designs for a resilient urban core that can also boost public health.

Two multidisciplinary teams selected as finalists will be given $45,000 stipends while a research team will be given $40,000.

According to the competition organizers, West Palm Beach has become a magnet for young people, and some 50 percent of the population is African American or Latino. To continue to draw a young, diverse community and grow far into the future, the city must continue to adapt to its increasingly precarious environment.

The MacArthur Foundation, creators of the “genius” grant, have just launched 100&Change, a competition for a single $100 million grant that can make “measurable progress towards solving a significant problem.” The MacArthur Foundation seeks a bold proposal with a charitable purpose focused on any critical issue facing people, places, or the environment. Proposals must be “meaningful, verifiable, durable, and feasible.” The goal is to identify issues that are solvable.

The MacArthur Foundation expects to receive applications mostly focused on domestic American issues, but they welcome international proposals as well.

Cecilia Conrad, MacArthur’s managing director leading the competition, told The Washington Post that the grant competition is designed to inspire more creative problem solving. “We believe there are solutions to problems out there that $100 million might be able to make significant headway or unlock resources, and we want to hear what those are. By focusing on solutions, we can inspire people to focus on problems that can be solved, and we just have to roll up our sleeves and get to it.”

In other competition news: AECOM, the Van Alen Institute, and 100 Resilient Cities have announced the latest Urban SOS, an annual student competition. Fair Share will explore the principles of the “sharing economy,” and how it can be applied to “support more equitable access to resources, improve the built environment, and enrich the quality of life of urban residents.” Fair Share is looking for multidisciplinary teams of students “to create a new generation of digital innovations combined with physical design strategies to improve how cities provide housing, open space, transportation, jobs, care, and many other services and resources.” Register by June 14 and submit proposals by September 12, 2016. Winners will receive $15,000 and up to $25,000 in services to support the implementation of the winning concept.

Many scientists argue we have already entered the age of the Anthropocene, an era in which humanity now determines the Earth’s geology, climate, and ecosystems. While a number of scientists and writers argue this new era marks the decline of nature, others say it may be the start of a future where humans deliberately and responsibly manage the planet’s natural assets. Regardless of where you stand on whether we can achieve a sustainable future in the Anthropocene, this epoch has produced unique landscapes. Anthroposcene, a new competition sponsored by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA), National Museum of Australia, and LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture, seeks the most compelling videos of the “profoundly frightening and yet somehow incredibly optimistic landscapes” of this new age.

The organizers write: “The philosophical and practical consequences couldn’t be greater: in short, nature is no longer that ever-providing thing ‘out there’, it is, for better or worse, something we are creating. The landscape of the Anthropocene is a cultural landscape and therefore a question of design.”

Videographers of any discipline are invited to submit but are limited to just three minutes to tell their story. Entrants can use their mobile phones to craft videos.

The video story that resonates the most will take home AUD $10,000 (USD $7,800). Six finalists will be selected by the jury, which includes University of Pennsylvania landscape architecture department chair Richard Weller, ASLA, for a public screening at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra on October 27, 2016, with the winner selected right after.

Another great opportunity for landscape architects and students: The National Park Service (NPS), the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), and Van Alen Institute are collaborating on Memorials for the Future, an ideas competition that seeks to “re-imagine how we think about, feel, and experience memorials.” The competition calls for landscape architects, artists, and social scientists to form teams and come up with new ways to “commemorate people and events that are more inclusive and flexible, and that enrich Washington D.C.’s landscape.” Entries will be narrowed down to three final teams, which will be asked to “develop site-specific designs for memorials in Washington, D.C., that are adaptive, ephemeral, virtual, event-focused, or interactive.” Submit concepts by May 4.

There are lots of great conferences that offer speaking opportunities for landscape architects. One in particular is SXSW Eco, which has become a leading forum for sustainable design across all disciplines. Last year, SXSW Eco provided a platform for a number of landscape architects, who spoke about everything from the future impact of autonomous vehicles on the built environment to how social media can be used to increase public participation in planning and design. Speaking at these kinds of inter-disciplinary events is important because it helps landscape architects reach a broad audience of influencers. SXSW Eco said last year nearly half of the conference’s attendees were their companies’ lead decision maker.

This year, SXSW Eco will be held in Austin, Texas, on October 10-12. Landscape architects can showcase their breakthrough ideas for the following subjects: cities, communications, conservation + adaptation, corporate responsibility, energy, food systems, policy, and water.

The conference organizers are looking for “content that inspires, educates, and informs, providing motivation as well as the tools to take action.” They want a real “diversity in perspective, opinion, and representation.” Furthermore, “self-promotion and advertorial presentations are not well-received.” Session proposals could include panels, workshops, debates, or any other creative format.

The conference will also feature a keynote speech by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the head of the Waterkeeper Alliance, who will talk about the movement to create swimmable, drinkable, fishable water for all; and talks by Annette Kim, University of Southern California’s Spatial Analysis Lab, who will uncover the “hidden connections between urban residents and their actions through data visualization;” and Raj Patel, University of Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs, who will explore the interconnected global food system.

Submit your session proposals by April 29. Using the “PanelPicker” tool, the SXSW community will then vote on which sessions will make it into the conference. Also, submit ideas for Place By Design, SXSW Eco’s “pitch competition,” which celebrates design with social and environmental impact, by May 27.

Houston, Texas, America’s fourth largest city, is in the middle of a rebirth, argues Charles Birnbaum, FASLA, president of The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) and a number of design journalists. A city known as “car-centric and zoning-adverse” is now spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get people out of cars and into parks. Within this sprawled-out city, under spaghetti loops of concrete highways, there are now networks of accessible parks, trails for running and biking, and bayous for kayaking and canoeing. Many of these public amenities also double as green infrastructure, constructed systems that provide habitat for a range of species, manage stormwater, and protect against flooding.

According to TCLF, Houston is “undergoing a monumental landscape architecture-led transformation whose scale and impact could fundamentally change the city and influence city-shaping around the globe.” The questions then are: How has Houston — the mecca of skyscrapers, highways, concrete, cars, and oil — shed some of its bad habits and created places for people? And as Houston undertakes this green makeover, what lessons does it offer to other car-centric cities that want to improve quality of life?

To delve more deeply into how Houston is changing its identity through landscape architecture, TCLF has put together Leading with Landscape II, a day-long conference on March 11. The conference will be followed by What’s Out There Weekend Houston on March 12-13, which will feature two days of free, expert-led tours.

The 26 What’s Out There tours will take visitors everywhere from SWA Group’s award-winning Buffalo Bayou Park, in image at top, to Rice University’s Raymond and Susan Brochstein Pavilion, created by the Office of James Burnett, and Discovery Green, a park Hargreaves Associates designed in 2008.

More than 70 percent of Europe’s population lives in cities, and that number is expected to grow to 80 percent by 2050. As European cities further densify, they must find new solutions to ever-worsening problems, like congestion, pollution, and poverty. To stay ahead of these challenges, cities must remain the nexus of innovation. This is the goal of the European Commission (EC)’s Urban Innovative Actions program, which seeks bold projects that can push forward innovation in urban planning and design throughout the Union. Projects, which must be submitted by an urban government with a population of at least 50,000 people, can receive up to €5 million over three years. From now through 2020, the EC will be offering €372 million for these urban experiments.

In the program’s inaugural year, the Commission seeks projects that focus on renewable energy, the integration of migrants and refugees into European society, jobs and skills development, and urban poverty.

To be considered, projects must “not be part of your normal activities,” the EC tells city governments. In fact, the projects must be something experimental, never before implemented in Europe. Innovation accounts for 40 percent of scoring. Projects must also show that they have real multi-stakeholder partnerships; a clear plan for measuring results; a scalable and replicable approach; and a solid strategy for implementation, with a realistic budget.

A general lack of urban experimentation is why the EC created the program. As the EC explains, “many urban planners and authorities have proposed new and innovative ideas, but these solutions are not always put into practice. One of the reasons is that urban authorities are reluctant to use their own financial resources to fund ideas that are new, unproven, and hence risky. Budget constraints therefore limit the capacities of urban authorities for experimentation.”

The Commission hopes to identify those city governments with the “imagination to design, prototype, test and eventually scale-up novelties that citizens and users would perceive as having an added value, therefore providing a wider, if not completely new, market for them.”

While there will surely be some failed experiments, it’s an exciting chance to test new approaches that can have lasting impact and spread far beyond Europe’s borders. The rest of the world’s cities can only benefit from the EC’s ambitious investment in the future.

Another convention-buster is the annual Buckminister Fuller Challenge, “socially-responsible design’s highest award,” which seeks original submissions from multi-disciplinary teams of designers, planners, artists, and scientists. In 2014, SCAPE landscape architecture won the $100,000 prize for their innovative Living Breakwaters, an oyster reef restoration project. This year, for the first time, the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) will also offer a separate student award. Submissions are due March 1.